Mobile devices such as smart phones, laptops, tablets, and the like have steadily increased in processing power and communication capability, allowing the devices to provide functionality that has previously been limited to desktop computing systems with dedicated network access. For example, mobile devices are able to connect to remove servers wirelessly and establish a communication session according to a protocol (e.g., Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), and/or Bluetooth) for access to websites and other service offerings.
The security of such wireless communication sessions is increasingly important, in view of the potentially sensitive information that can be transmitted during a session. For example, a person may wish to check his bank account balance or apply for a mortgage loan using his smart phone. Eavesdroppers who listen in on the wireless signal must be prevented from gaining access to the sensitive information. The mobile devices have the capability of establishing and managing a communication session in a secure manner, through use of encryption and authentication techniques, such as HTTP Secure (HTTPS), Secure Socket Layer (SSL), public-key infrastructure (PKI), digital certificates, and secure cookies.
Also, many people now own a plurality of mobile devices and other personal computing devices and regularly use the devices for the same or similar purposes. For example, a person may carry a smart phone for web access (e.g., shopping, financial transactions, email, and/or job tasks) while commuting to and from work, and the person may switch to a tablet or laptop computer when she arrives home to continue the same activities. For example, if the person is reviewing her investment portfolio on her mobile device through an HTTPS session with Fidelity, she may want to pick up where she left off using a laptop in her home office. However, the person must manually establish another session with Fidelity on the laptop by connecting to the website, providing authentication credentials, and navigating to the same page or section of the website that she had been accessing on her mobile device.